“Operation Red Dove,” the forced evacuation of militant squatters and die-hard settlers from Yamit, was temporarily suspended today because of Yom Ha-Shoah, a day of remembrance for the Holocaust victims. But the army was kept busy tracking down and ousting Israeli and foreign reporters determined to cover the events in northern Sinai despite a military order severely limiting media access to the region.
The Supreme Court today rejected an appeal by the Foreign Press Association to overrule army and government measures which prevent reporters from exercising their right to keep the public informed. The court accepted the government’s contention that a pool arrangement limiting coverage to 16 selected journalists was sufficient for media needs.
The government argued that the presence of hundreds of reporters and television cameramen representing hundreds of newspapers, radio and television stations all over the world would only encourage the militants and make the army’s evacuation task abubly difficult.
JOUNALISTS DEFY BAN
Even though the government backed away from its initial total ban on press coverage in the Yamit area, journalists saw the pool arrangement as an attempt to muzzle the media and would have none of it. Members of the Israel Editors Committee and the Israel Journalists Association went to Yamit today in defiance of army orders. Busloads of editors and reporters attempted to break through the army road blocks around Yamit but were turned back by troops.
But some journalists, adopting the tactics of the “Halt the Withdrawal” movement, managed to infiltrate the town. Twelve Foreign Press Association journalists representing media outlets in nine countries are reported to have barricaded themselves in an abandoned house in Yamit. Others were said to have donned skullcaps to pose as Orthodox Jews who make up the majority of the Yamit resistors.
The army, which completely surrounds Yamit, is expected to resume the forced evacuation before dawn tomorrow morning. In preparation for the final showdown, army bull-dozers are digging deep ditches around the buildings occupied by squatters. The intention is to remove the squatters forcibly and demolish the structures immediately thereafter, burying the debris in the ditches.
MK Geula Cohen of the ultra-nationalist Tehiya faction, who is in Yamit, told a reporter today that the government would “not be burying the houses but burying itself.” Yamit and the rest of the Israel-occupied portions of Sinai must be handed back to Egypt this Sunday.
TROUBLE EXPECTED FROM SOME EXTREMISTS
Most of the die-hards have said they would offer only passive resistance when the troops come to get them. But trouble is expected from followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach movement who have barricaded themselves in an air raid shelter and reportedly are armed. They have threatened suicide if approached by Israeli soldiers. They said they would shoot themselves at half-hour intervals when the army enters Yamit.
Many of the Koch members are American-bom Orthodox Jews and their threat has alarmed relatives in the U.S. Israel Radio today broadcast appeals from the mothers of some of them and the mothers of Israeli Koch members begging them to “give up this foolishness and come home,”
Meanwhile, the media continued to protest what it sees as the government’s infringement on freedom of the press. Israeli newspapers today appeared with blank spaces on their front pages symbolizing the ban. Radio and television observed one minute of silence last night.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
